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On a turbo car, a boost gauge/gage is as important as a fuel gage. It common for a turbocharged car to spring a boost leak, etc. Your car could be greatly under performing, and you may not even know it if you don't have a good gauge installed..

A good, reliable gauge which integrates well with the audi interior was hard to come by until Podi.ca designed a gauge specifically for these vehicles. The quality and ease of integration cannot be beat. In this particular install, I will be installing the new Podi Electronic Stepper Motor gauge. This gauge gives the user a lot more configuration options than a standard analog gauge. It also is (as the name implies) motor driven - so there is no 'buzz' that you can get with a standard gauge.

If you have a standard analog gauge, I describe the baics of installing those here

The writeup will be presented in multiple parts. I will show how to tap a boost/vacuum line on the 1.8T motor as well as a 2.0T FSI motor. Then I will show how to wire up the Electronic Stepper Motor gauge, and then I will show you how to color match the Podi to the interior of your car. The painting step is not needed by most, so although I did it first, I will present it at the end.

SUPPLIES for Installing the Gauge- Pretty much all of the parts you need are included in the gauge package. I made use of some additional wiring to extend the Podi harnesses. You may not needed these on your install, but I used them on mine.

Installing the gauge is not very challenging. The first thing you need to do is find out where to tap to get a good boost reading. I used this line off of the intake manifold.

On my vehicle, this line runs under the intake manifold. You can tap it anywhere along the way, but I wanted the tapping point to be out of site. I drew in red the path the boost/vacuum line takes.

The T represents approximately where I T'd into the line.

I was working on my car doing a couple other things when I installed this gauge, so in this picture my intake manifold was removed. This give you a better idea of where this boosted line runs.

I cut the line approximately where the red line is drawn.

With the line split, you can install the supplied T fitting. I used a little bit of dish soap on the plastic part of the T fitting to get the hose to slip on easier.

If you have a 2.0T FSI engine, included with your gauge will be a custom silicone piece for connecting your boost/vacuum line.

Remove the engine cover and if you look along the right hand side of the intake manifold there will be a small black rubber cap held in place with a clamp. Cut the clamp, remove the small rubber cap and this will expose the bung that you will tap onto.

If you purchased the kit for a 2.0T FSI engine, then the kit will come with a custom silicon T-fitting for the install. The silicone fitting looks like this:

Take the silicone t-fitting and insert one of the anti-buzz inline restrictors into the center part of the fitting.

Connect the boost gauge line to the other side of the anti-buzz restrictor

Push the boost gauge line as far as you can to make sure the vacuum line seals over the restrictor

Slip the open end of the silicone t-fitting onto the exposed bung on the intake manifold and push the fitting in as far as possible

With the T installed, you can use the supplied vacuum hose to run the boosted line to wherever you want to install the sender. I decided to put the sender to the right of my coolant tank. This would give me easy access to run the electrical signals from the sender to the electronic gauge.

I just used some 3M double sided tape to stick the sender to the car.

The picture to the right has the ECU cover removed

The path to the cabin is shown in the picture to the right by the white vinyl hose which I used for my old boost gauge. In order to get into the ECU box you need to poke through the rubber grommet/hose which has the electrical connections for the ECU, and then run the wires through it. There are a couple rubber nipples on the grommet which you can try to use, or you can just poke a new hole.

This is where your coat hanger comes in handy.

This is the point at which I decided to extend the sender harness. There are only three wires, so it is not a big deal to just make a little harness to extend them. You can do this however you want (probably in a more permanent manner than I did), but you get the idea.

I taped up the connections with electrical tape and proceeded from this point with my new harness.

After the kick panel is removed, you can look up from the floor on the drivers side and see up and out of the ECU box. Here you can see plenty of daylight coming through.

Just slide your harness down through this hole so you can access it from under the steering wheel.

For the ignition wire, I used the same connection that I used on the Turbo Timer Install

As guided by the wiring diagram, I connected both the Red wire from the gauge, and the Red wire from the sender to this line.

The connection is located in the harness coming down from the steering column. It is circled in the picture to the left

For a ground, I decided to use the same ground I have been using for all of my accessory installs. I just used a bolt next to the fuse panel. I sanded off the paint to it has a good chassis connection.

The black wire from the gauge, and the sender were grounded here.

There are multiple ways to connect to a power source - so this is by no means the only/best way. Some people decide to jump fuses in the fuse box, etc. I decided to connect straight to a power block under the kick panel. I used this connection for my turbo timer, and it works just fine.

If you look around under the kick panel, you will see a bunch of thick red wires going to this point. I wired the Yellow wire from the gauge harness to this.

With all that wiring done, you can button it all up and zip tie things in place. It is time to install the pod for the gauge.

In order to install the new pod, you have to first remove the existing upper steering column cover.

In order to remove the upper column cover, you need to first telescope the steering wheel all the way out towards the driver, and push it as far down as it goes.

Then use your T8 Torx driver to unscrew the two small torx screws which are holding the upper and lower column covers together.

When the two torx bolts are removed, the upper cover will just pop right off of the lower cover.

You will see that there is some leather material attached to the upper cover. On my vehicle, there were 4 retainer clips on the underside of the cover which needed to be removed. Just work a small flathead driver in there and they will pop right off.

One thing to note is that the material which you removed from the stock part may not fit exactly on the Podi. Apparently on 2002 vehicles, the material was located underneath the stock part, and after 2002 the material connected on top of the stock part. Since I have a 2002, there was no good way to attached the material back on. I used some hot melt glue to get the job done.

The fact of the matter is that when the wheel is back in place (i.e. not telescoped out), you can't even see this.

After the pod is all installed, you can plug in the gauge and just pop it into the Podi. It will look a little something like this:

I am very happy with the fit an styling of this package.

SUPPLIES - What you need for this is some interior house paint from home depot, a Preval Sprayer (available at Sherwin-Williams Stores) and some sand paper.

You should bring a Q-Tip or something with you to the store so you can apply a light coat of the paint on a spot on the inside of the stock piece. This will let you see the color match before you commit to buying the paint and painting the Podi

The circled section of the picture shows where the paint was applied and dried.

You can see another spot where the paint was applied thickly with my finger, and it didn't dry as well

Just so you can see what it looks like if it is not thinned enough, here is a close up.

Painting the pod is an iterative process. You will probably have to spray it, then sand a bit, then spray it again. If you are careful enough, you will probably get a nice, even coat on your second try.

I sprayed it on a little on the thick side for my first coat, because I knew I was going to have to sand it a bit.

I used 400 grit paper to lightly sand it down.